Losing Things

By Madeleine Kando

I lost my phone yesterday. I went out for a drink and wanted to call my husband, but there was no phone in my bag. Must have left it in the car, I thought, with a hint of anxiety. I hardly ever leave it in the car, except when I go swimming, for obvious reasons.

When I got home, I called myself on my husband’s phone, but the familiar ‘quack’  (that’s my ringtone) was nowhere to be heard.

After a sleepless night, I rushed back to the place where I used it last. The building was empty but open. I looked under every chair, on every table, and rummaged through a box with personal belongings. My heart sank. Bye-bye thousand-dollar phone.

With my tail between my legs, I passed a small table where people leave brochures. The corner of a familiar-looking object peeked out from under a typed sheet. My phone! It had secretly and wisely hidden itself under some brochures.

I was overjoyed. I walked out of the building unseen and unheard. Like the CIA after a successful covert operation, except I hadn’t killed anyone.

This seems to be a recurring theme in my life. A while ago, I lost my favorite pair of sunglasses, the ones I bought in Paris for a hundred euros during a bout of temporary insanity.

It happened while I was walking my diminutive dog in the forest. I was awake most of the night and kept hearing this little voice calling out to me: ‘I am here! I am here! Please find me’, like one of the shrunken kids in the movie ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’.
I went back to the forest and suddenly remembered bending over to pick up my tiny dog before he disappeared in the underbrush. ‘That’s when it happened!’ I thought. I retraced my steps and saw a speck of shiny brown amongst the green. ‘Some idiot must have dropped their sunglasses…Wait.. those are mine!' The odds that I would find them were so small that I thought I was dreaming.

So here I was, happy as a pig in mud. I wore my sunglasses the rest of the day even though it was raining. We were bonding.

Some things I lost but never found again, like my mother. Still, I find her again regularly in my dreams. It is not an exact replica, but beggars cannot be choosers.

As a child, I lost my country when I fled Hungary as a political refugee, but I went shopping for a substitute. I first moved to France, then Holland, and finally America. So that wasn’t a total loss.

I lost my wallet once. I reported it to the police, cancelled all my credit cards, and was sent to the doghouse by my husband, until I found it in the crack of the back seat of my car.

Losing things is not limited to physical objects. You can lose your shirt, your mind, your health, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to the ‘lost and found’ and ask the clerk if they had found some of the things that you lost?

‘Excuse me. I lost my nerve yesterday. Could you tell me if somebody found it and brought it in?’

‘We have so many lost nerves here, Sir, you have to be more specific. When and where did you exactly lose your nerve? We do require some identification, of course. It wouldn’t do if you went home with somebody else’s lost nerves.’

You can lose face, which I am very familiar with. It’s called embarrassment. The day I told my boss that one should be able to see their own shoes without bending over, or the time I farted in public and looked at my daughter standing next to me and said: ‘Mary, how could you?’

I lose heart at the drop of a hat. I am one of those people who need constant confirmation of their self-worth. Is this post really worth reading? Is our country salvageable? Was immigrating to the United States the biggest blunder in my life?

Maybe losing things is a subconscious preparation for the ultimate voyage. You cannot take it with you, so the more things you lose, the lighter the journey will be. leave comment here